Sartago means an ancient Roman frypan, we're told on Sartago's website. Here's a new bistro tabling Mediterranean dishes, the influences this time including Portuguese. So it includes Atlantic as well as middle-seafood.

Accompanied by an expensive and fairly limited wine list, offerings were variable in quality. Walk in off Church St at Richmond to find a bright, modest ambience. Service was keen when I visited, but also inexperienced.

FOOD

Let's chuck this "sharing" nonsense. If you've got a dinner "companion", it means, for heaven's sake, that you're going to share bread with them.

I've had a gutful of being encouraged to share food. Where I grew up, you had to.

And let's also – in Sartago's case – correct the misspellings on its menu. And rather than newly minted twee headings such as "Mediterranean Flights" and "Portions to Share", please just tell me how big offerings are – entree or main-course size. I found navigating Sartago's list irritating, an unfortunate prologue to eating. And serving staff were barely exact when I asked how big servings were.

Of three savoury specials, I tried an entree-sized ($15) plate of house-made pappardelle (broad fettucine) with a wild rabbit ragu and mixed mushies.

In flavour it was fine, the pasta not too al dente. But ribbons tended to clump together unappetisingly. A very generous serving of big rabbit bits and fungi accompanied. But my portion needed to be several degrees hotter.

Two big slices of a country terrine ($10) were fine. The tasty medium-coarse filling was belted with bacon and arrived with toast and a little bowl of house-made gherkins of a curious spicy acidity – their interiors soft – that you might like but I didn't. "Share" portions are slated at $30 each and we tried two.

"My Uncle's Paella" was said to be of Valenciana-style and arrived in a stainless-steel pan with a glass lid. It contained clams in their shells, four big mussels also in shells, clumps of good chicken bits, a few short pork ribs that were more bone than meat and a bed of slightly underdone rice graced with crescents of red capsicum and studded with fresh peas. The dish needed seasoning, and while I'm no huge fan of saffron, more would have lifted it.

Porchetta was the dish of the dinner. Two thick scrolls of pork scotch fillet were said to have been roasted for a dozen hours. The meat nicely coated with a finely flavoured herb mix, it was unctuous, tasty and tender and sat in a slick of cooking juices. Surrounding the lot was a ring of tangy apple and pear chutney.

Of six "Dulcis in Fundus", we chose "Mum's Apple Tart" ($15), a smallish basin of soft pudding topped with thin crunchy crescents of fruit.

STAFF

The night I visited, Sartago's two front-of-house staff were uniformed. They smiled and charmed. But they didn't remove a surplus wine glass, didn't seem to understand the position of our knives and forks meant we were finished, and didn't know how to hold a parmesan grater so that the cheese could get out. As with so many fault-prone waiters, they needed a lot more training.

DRINK

Just as well eight table wines come by glass at $10-$14. Because you get one bottle of white at $45 and a red for the same price. Beyond them, prices soar. Wines from Italy, France and New Zealand are listed.

X FACTOR

Sartago is a pleasant place. A small walk-in, it has room beside the bar for a row of tables that are pretty close.